I tried the Zalman heatpipe once, and it raised my case temperatures by about 10C. I guess I just didn't have enough airflow to extract the heat from the case over such a large surface area. So, the card, a Geforce 4 Ti 4400, ended up dying about 2 months after I installed it.

Now, I decided to try bluefront's idea on the new card. Since I noticed that the GPU gets pretty high temps if I let the fan stay on or not, I decided to just unplug it and use two slot fans at 12V, one at each end, to keep the the air flowing over the whole card. (The stock heatsink/fan is only rated at 10CFM anyway, so this should be better, right? )

Surprisingly, doing this actually ends up being quieter than if I had left the GPU fan on, so I'm happy.

The fans I used were: 1 "PC toys" 42 CFM slot fan in the back, and 1 Antec Cyclone 22 CFM in the front blowing at the "top part" of the card (i.e. it's "one slot above" the rear slot fan, the same height as the graphics card -- this means that it blows directly at the capacitors on the edge of the card.)

I used two layers of CompUSA "Acoustic Absorption Mats" on a facial tissue cardboard box cut to the size of the graphics card + the left side's height as the duct, which should be easier to obtain than plastic cards, and taped the duct to the graphics card tightly, creating the "vaccum cleaner"-like effect.

Since doing this means that the stock HS/fan is never removed, it shouldn't void your warranty.

Okay... Now, at least, I know why materials harder than cardboard may be a good idea.

Cardboard and the foam it's attached to will expand when heated, causing the whole thing to bulge and end up not being duct-shaped, which definitely degrades the whole thing to "open air". Now, I'm using a matchbox car box (with the car inside) and a third of a kleenex box to prop the bottom flap up so it'll stay duct-shaped, but I guess it doesn't look as "professional" that way.

Okay... Now, at least, I know why materials harder than cardboard may be a good idea.

Cardboard and the foam it's attached to will expand when heated, causing the whole thing to bulge and end up not being duct-shaped, which definitely degrades the whole thing to "open air". Now, I'm using a matchbox car box (with the car inside) and a third of a kleenex box to prop the bottom flap up so it'll stay duct-shaped, but I guess it doesn't look as "professional" that way.

Anyways, just FYI...

can we see some pix ? Would love to see how u are getting yr gfx card quieter/ducted visually

I used the overhead bracket approach (Zalman 123, I think), except I went out to the hardware store and bought a large L-bracket (sometimes called a corner brace). I screwed the bracket into the Zalman so that it was hanging down in front of the card's heatsink, then I zip-tied an L1A fan to the holes in the bracket after removing the stock fan of my Leadtek A280 (Geforce 4200ti) board.

It works well but the rig takes up 2 PCI slots (not including the AGP slot) even with the fan pressing up against the heatsink. A slimmer fan might allow me to reclaim one PCI slot. I bought a 15mm thick Sanyo-Denki Petite Ace but I haven't had time to try it. Also, it was a major PITA to get the Zalman bracket installed in my Lian-Li case with all the extra weight on it, mostly due to the extremely poor nonstandard thumbscrew design of the Lian-Li.

The G01 has worked as advertised for me. Very quiet and as far as I can tell, effective cooling - no problems with the card.

I may OC the card a bit to see what the the heat sink can do - it moves a lot more air than the stock set up.

That being said, considering what the Vermax is, I think its over priced though. Its a simple slab of copper, cut in a star shape with a few holes and quiet fan attached. No fancy extrusisions, machining or shaping.

Had I known I would have just made one myself from a $5 piece of copper and slapped on a $7 panaflo. Seriously, you could make the thing in a couple of hours. 30 minutes if you have access to a scroll saw.

hi folks newbie here, have read lots on this forum and have bought a few things as a result. now have no money left.

i have the crucial 9800 pro (much louder than the crucial 9700 pro, i had that as well) so i silenced it with the zalman zm80a and have got the 60mm stock amd fan that came with my barton 2500 blowing over the gfx card at min speed with zalman fanmate. had it like this for 2 weeks now with no problems so far.

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